Price of Jailing Criminals

OK, this is a quick one. I was getting angry as hell reading the Metro section of the oregonian (as usual). First, in their highlighted fugitive section (a good idea) is a man who did 3 years in prison for raping a woman at knifepoint. Now, he is wanted because he is not checking in with his probation officer. Shocking. Flip the next page and in the editorial section is an article basically saying we spend too much money keeping criminals in prison for too long. That we are spending too much money on our "tough on crime" mentality. Excuse me? Did I miss something? Multnomah judges are TERRIBLY soft in sentencing, as are most courts in Oregon. That was the whole reason we needed measure 11 because judges weren't doing their jobs. Now, we have a rapist with a knife doing three years and the oregonion upset because we are spending money keeping criminals in for TOO long? Huh? The scary part is that under measure 11 the rapist should have gotten much more time, so the DAs office must have plead it to a lesser included bringing it out of measure 11. Unbelievable.